


all i know is a door in the dark

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Male-Female Friendship, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-11 19:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9008809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: Natasha is sitting at one of the bars in the JetBlue terminal, sipping a whiskey soda, when her cell phone rings.“It’s me.” Steve’s voice, when he speaks, sounds cautious, but Natasha figures it’s probably in his best interest to err on the side of attentiveness, given their situation. “I’m thinking of heading up a jailbreak. Are you up for it?”(When Steve broke his friends out of the Raft after their capture, he wasn't entirely successful. After a year filled with long legal battles and personal struggles, Clint is finally being released from prison. This is what comes after.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enigma731](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/gifts).



> Written for the 2016 Clintasha Secret Santa exchange and the following prompt:
> 
> _An AU in which Clint doesn't get out of the Raft when Steve jail breaks everybody else. Now it's a year (or more) later, and he's finally being released after a long, drawn out legal struggle._
> 
> This is essentially less of an AU and more of a canon divergence of what would and could have happened in this case. But it centers on an idea that I've had for awhile and had wanted to write, because why not put Clint through a little more pain if I can? ;)
> 
> Thank you to gecko for beta and encouragement and for being my German location scout. <3 Banner made by the wonderful [katharinebishop](http://katharinebishop.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

**NOW -- A farmhouse in Ostenholz, Niedersachsen. Mid-afternoon.**

Clint realizes he doesn’t know what he expected after getting out of the Raft. So when he wakes up after what feels like a week-long sleep and finds himself in a big bed, eyes meeting a cotton-colored sky and warm sunlight, he thinks he might be dreaming. Or, at least, he would think that if his mind didn’t immediately register that he’s somewhere that _has_  a window and a view of the actual outside world.

“Oh, good. You’re up.” 

“Should I not be?” He answers more as a way of testing out his voice than anything else; his throat feels scratchy and dry and his vocal chords sound like they’ve been scraped over with a blunt knife. He stretches and Natasha immediately gets up, sitting down next to him and easing him into a sitting position. 

“Careful.” Natasha nods to his arm, which he notices for the first time is encased in a black sling. He frowns at the forgotten memory; his nine lives didn’t exist for nothing but surely he’d remember if he _broke his damn arm_. 

“Huh?”

“Fractured at the bone. But the good news is, it should heal pretty easily. I have to hand it to you, I didn’t expect you to put up such a fight. I forgot how much I underestimated you when you’re drugged, though.”

“Drugged.” Clint knits his brows together, cataloging the taste in the back of his throat. “I was drugged?”

“Well, not in a bad way.” Natasha’s voice softens as she puts a hand on his knee, which is covered in a thick quilt. “Do you remember me coming to get you? On the Raft?”

Clint nods, though the movement makes his head hurt as much as thinking of the memory does. “Yeah. You came to my cell. But how…” He trails off, trying to piece things together. Unlike when Steve had showed up right after they’d been captured, this hadn’t been a secret release. He had been walked out, multiple guards and all, and had been practically handed over into Natasha’s care. 

“You suffered a breakdown while we were getting you out,” Natasha continues. “I guess I couldn’t blame you. Fortunately, I had some Librium with me, but apparently it put you out for longer than I expected.”

“Great,” Clint grunts. “So where am I now?”

“Safe,” Natasha replies simply, getting up and motioning to the small bedroom. 

“Safe _where_?” 

Natasha hesitates. “Germany," she admits finally. "A farmhouse in Ostenholz, Niedersachsen, to be exact. I needed somewhere close, somewhere that I could bring you while you healed, and I didn’t want this all over the papers any more than it already is.”

“Any more --” Clint stops, trying to temper his rising anger. “You left me in that hellhole for a _year_! A year, Natasha! You left me to rot there, away from my family, and, and...you just _left_  me!”

Natasha looks both sad and guilty. “You have no idea what we went through. This was a high profile legal battle, Clint. It wasn’t like talking to a judge about a traffic violation. You know that.” 

“Yeah, well, what about what _I_  went through?” Clint asks in frustration. “I was fucking interrogated every other day, Nat! They fed me shit food, and I barely got to shower. I didn’t even get to leave my cell!”

Natasha swallows down what looks like some sort of cry. “I want to talk about this. I do. But you need to stay here until we figure out what the next step is.”

 Clint stares at her, trying to absorb the real meaning of her words. “You’re putting me under house arrest?”

“It’s not house arrest,” Natasha replies. “It’s just the safest place for you to be right now, given everything that’s happened. You need some time before you go back to your family. And I’d rather keep you close, because I really don’t want to have to ship you off to one of my safehouses in Bucharest. Who knows what trouble you’d get into with an alias and no one to watch what tourist shops you go into.”

“Bucharest would be nicer,” Clint grumbles, and Natasha gives him a look.

“Clint. Please. This isn’t some carnie shit, or some SHIELD game. Just...follow orders for once in your life and lie low for a bit, okay?”

Clint huffs out a sharp breath, looking down at his injured arm. “What are you going to do while I’m laid up here? Tend the fire?”

“I have my own plans,” Natasha says in that evasive voice that he knows so well, the one that means _you don’t get to know_. It’s a voice Natasha used to use on him before they were really partners, before she had decided he deserved to know all her layers, all her secrets and all her hidden sparks. 

“So you’re going to go off and play martyr, and leave me to play house all by myself?”

“You are not all by yourself,” offers a soft voice from the doorway and Clint leans forward in surprise, eyes widening at the sight of Wanda Maximoff. Her dark hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun and she’s covered in thick sweats, as if she’s trying to warm herself on a cold day, even though Clint can feel the heat siphoning through the old, groaning pipes of the farmhouse.

“How long have you been here?”

Wanda chews on a bitten-down nail. “Two days.”

“ _Two days_? Natasha, what --”

“I told you that the medication knocked you out for longer than I thought it would,” Natasha says unapologetically. “I’m attributing the rest of your sleep to the fact that you probably couldn’t sleep well in the Raft. Fortunately, that allowed us to bring you here easily, and take care of your arm in the meantime. You should be grateful.”

“Yeah, I know how much you like to sew me up and stick needles in my skin,” Clint grumbles. Natasha rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling.

“I’ve left some instructions in the kitchen, for how the house runs,” she says, nodding towards the door. “Wanda’s been getting herself acquainted with everything for the past few days and can help you if you have questions.” 

Clint eyes Natasha, and then moves his gaze to Wanda, who is pulling down the sleeves of her shirt and staring at the floor, almost as if she’s implying she’d rather be anywhere than in front of both of them at this moment.

“So that’s it?” Clint can’t help the whine that he knows is coloring his voice, and tries to ignore how much he sounds like his ten-year-old son. “That’s all I get? Just a wave and an instruction list and, hey, have fun, remember the old days when we didn’t trust each other to turn our backs for five seconds?”

“Yes,” Natasha says in a tone so perfunctory that Clint wants to scream. She gets up from the bed. “I’ll be back in twenty-four hours, and we’ll talk. I promise. And don’t trash the house while I’m gone, or I’ll tell Laura.”

 

 

 **THEN (AKA ONE YEAR AGO) -- New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, Terminal 5. 4:35 PM EST.**  

Natasha is sitting at one of the bars in the JetBlue terminal, sipping a whiskey soda, her second in under two hours (because if one more person tries to talk to her, she just might get those throwing stars out of her boots after all, even though it’s been seven years since she promised Clint she would stop reacting to civilian annoyances with murder) when her cell phone rings.

“It’s me.” Steve’s voice, when he speaks, sounds cautious, but Natasha figures it’s probably in his best interest to err on the side of attentiveness, given their situation. “I’m thinking of heading up a jailbreak. Are you up for it?”

“I’m a little offended that you’re even asking,” Natasha says, arching an eyebrow at absolutely nobody. “I already broke the law once this week and now you’re just assuming I can break more?”

“Romanoff -–”

“Just checking.”

 “You know, I thought I’d ask this time, before I dragged someone else into my own bullshit.”

“And I appreciate the gesture. Pick me up at Terminal 5.” She smiles to herself, downing the rest of her drink and leaving a ten dollar bill on the table. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

Steve picks Natasha up at the curb five minutes after he calls, in a laughably small rented Toyota too big for his bulky frame, and Natasha promptly puts her sneakered feet up on the dash as he pulls away. 

“Just like 2014 all over again,” she says, popping a pink bubble with a grin. “But with a smaller car.” 

Steve rolls his eyes. “Sure, and instead of running from HYDRA and Crossbones, we’re running from the government and our own friends.”

“Yes,” Natasha replies patiently. “But we’re still chasing down Barnes and also most of our teammates, and we’re going to stage a jailbreak against a corrupt government. So.” She shrugs and smirks as she studies her nails. “2014.” 

“You’re being extremely practical about this,” Steve says dryly. “Is there something going on I don’t know about?”

Natasha falls quiet for a moment too long; she had called Laura when she had gotten to the airport, long before she had started drinking, and had relayed the whole sordid story about Clint’s situation. It hadn’t been a conversation that she enjoyed having, especially with the addition of hearing Cooper and Lila ask when their father was coming home in the background.

“So what are you going to do?” Laura had asked quietly. Her voice was a cross between worried and nonchalant, the barest measure of putting on a face for her children while allowing Natasha to know she was not happy and worried as all hell. Natasha had imagined her smiling into the phone for effect while kneading bread for the weekend, soft hands folding dough into lumpy piles while hard fists pounded with a little too much force to ease her aggression.

“What do you _think_  I’m going to do?” Natasha had replied, turning her head away. Being undercover in this way, hiding in plain sight, it was easier than she expected; Vienna had put her in the spotlight more than she was comfortable with but thanks to everything that had happened Barnes and the Accords, the public had been more concerned with faces other than her own. It didn’t surprise her that Laura was angry, but there was no time for that conversation now.

“Is it going to be legal?” 

“Seriously?” Natasha had almost laughed out loud, and Laura had sighed.

“Right. I wouldn’t expect anything else. Stay safe, Nat.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” 

Natasha hums quietly to herself as Steve exits the terminal traffic and pulls onto the main road, twisting a strand of auburn hair around her finger. She makes a mental note to get a haircut when she gets back to the farm. _If_ she ever gets back to the farm.

“Where the hell are you taking us?” 

“Private boarding zone,” Steve responds, glancing over at her. “Are you really going to sit like this for the entire ride?”

“Not my fault you couldn’t spring for a stolen truck,” Natasha points out. “And yes, I am. Not that I know where we’re going considering we need to fly to this place, and we’re getting further and further away from somewhere that we can do that.”

“I was about to get there, if you would’ve stopped interrogating me,” Steve says, navigating the car further down the road. “Can’t say that I’ve missed you, Romanoff.”

“Oh, fuck off, Rogers. You’ve missed me.” She watches the muscles in Steve’s face change, twitching enough to lift the side of his mouth into a faint smile.

 _I’m 95, I’m not dead_. 

“Do you know where they are?”

Natasha takes a deep breath and then exhales slowly, trying to calm the feeling rattling around in her stomach. “The Raft,” she says after a long pause, pursing her lips and smiling tightly at him. She makes a clicking sound with her tongue as she attempts to find the rest of her words. “It’s a…prison, mostly for super villains. High-tech, maximum security, made to hold and contain the most dangerous enhanced individuals.”

Steve blows out a breath as loud as Natasha’s. “So, mostly impossible to break.”

“I didn’t say it was impossible,” Natasha responds casually and Steve barks out a laugh.

“Most dangerous enhanced individuals, huh?” 

“Well, according to the government, that’s what we all are,” Natasha says, staring out the window. “Or at least, that’s what Ross believes.”

Steve snorts. “Think Tony knew that when he agreed to sign the Accords?”

“Of course not,” Natasha responds curtly. “But that doesn’t matter now, does it? Stark doesn’t matter. What happened in Siberia doesn’t matter. _This_  is what matters. And if we don’t do it, no one will, and then none of our friends will ever get out of that floating prison. So.” She swallows down her emotions, trying to push Clint’s face out of her mind, and fixes her gaze against the road in front of them. “Do you want to tell me how we’re getting to the middle of the Arctic Ocean and pulling this off?”

Steve moves two hands over the wheel, his smile growing wider. “Well, since we’ve already broken the law, I figured I’d call in some old friends.”

 

 

 **NOW -- A farmhouse in Ostenholz, Niedersachsen. Mid-afternoon.**  

It’s not really as bad as Clint makes it out to be. Really, the most annoying thing is that he’s been in a goddamn prison for an entire year and has no idea what’s even gone on with his family, not to mention Natasha or his team. If he even _has_  a team anymore, considering the road they’d been headed down when he was taken away. And now that he’s finally out, he can’t even go home and try to reclaim his life like a normal person.

The lack of information is also annoying, as is feeling like he’s been dropped somewhere with no apparent regard for his feelings, because goddammit, he had Laura and the kids to worry about and there seemed to be no phone hooked up to the house. Clint does manage to uncover two burner phones in a box underneath his bed, ones that look like they came right out of a 2001 time capsule, but neither of them have any battery power and he can’t find a charger.

“So if we die here, no one even knows where to find us,” he mutters to himself as he walks around the house, before realizing that’s untrue. This was clearly a Natasha Romanoff safehouse, and a Natasha Romanoff safehouse meant that there were definitely ways to communicate. Clint just had to find them.

The worst of it, truthfully, is feeling like he’s been locked up against his own will, the way he was after Loki, when no one -- not Laura, not Natasha, not Fury -- trusted him to walk around with his thoughts. He knows Natasha’s reason for keeping him here isn’t that, even if he doesn’t know _what_  it is, but it doesn’t mean he’s not feeling frustrated about the whole thing. The problem is, unlike Loki or even when SHIELD fell and he had to deal with the fallout of trust issues, he’s not stuck in this alone. And that means he’s going to have someone watching his every move, someone that he has to answer to if he sleeps until noon or doesn’t shower for five days. He can’t wallow in his own self-deprecation or drink himself into oblivion with other people around, it just didn’t work like that.

“It is better than the compound,” says Wanda as she pours tea for herself, grabbing a cup for Clint. “At least if I want to, I can go outside.”

“Yeah,” Clint muses. “I guess.” He gives her a look as she sits down at the kitchen table. “You’re not...I dunno...annoyed about being locked up with me here?”

“I was already locked up,” Wanda says evenly, and Clint’s stomach clenches. 

“I know. I mean, we both were. But --”

“I have been locked up my entire life,” Wanda continues. “In Sokovia. At the Avengers building. In prison. At least here, I feel safe.” She pauses, her voice softening. “Also, I missed you.”

Her words make Clint realize he never bothered to ask her how she was doing, since she  _seemed_  physically fine, all things considered. Then again, it had been at least a year since the airport battle, the last time he had seen anyone he considered family or a friend. And at the time, Wanda had been going through an anxiety spiral of her own that he had been focused on helping her through.

“They got you out,” he says as Wanda sips her tea, sitting down across from him.

“Yes,” she says, and the way she forms the words gives Clint the impression that it’s not a memory she wants to revisit.

“You, uh...where did you go? After?”

Wanda looks at Clint, and then back down at her tea. “I stayed in Wakanda with Captain Rogers. Then I went to visit your family.”

“You --” Clint stops, leaning forward in surprise. “You went to my family?”

“Natasha was with me,” Wanda replies, as if that makes everything okay, and Clint grinds his teeth together.

“So you all sat around baking cookies and watching television while I was rotting away underwater somewhere?”

“No,” Wanda says quietly. “We contacted people who could help us get you out of there and tried to figure out how to save you. It was not easy, Clint.”

Clint snorts. “Yeah, I bet it wasn’t. It wasn’t easy getting interrogated about everyone I loved for days on end, either.”

“Clint --”

“Forget it,” he snaps, getting up. “Natasha wanted me to be here, right? I’m sure she has a reason. Always has, when it’s come to us.” He doesn’t wait for Wanda to respond and walks outside, half-wondering if she’ll stop him. After all, who’s to say he’s not just going to run away and hitch a ride back to the farm?

He opens the door one-handed and ends up standing on the small porch of the house, staring out over the trees and grass. There are beeches and oaks all around him, mossy patches of green beneath his feet -- the perfect isolated landscape, one that makes his entire body ache with a need and desire to shoot. God, he wants nothing more than to pick up his bow, string an arrow, and _shoot_. He looks down at his bum arm; even without knowing where his bow was, he knows he can’t help himself right now.

“If you are wondering if it looks any different, it does not,” Wanda says from behind him. Clint turns around with a confused look, and Wanda points upwards.

“The sky,” she continues. “You are wondering if anything has changed. If things are different because you have been locked up.”

“That’s not --” He stops, because he suddenly feels tired, and notices she’s carrying a bundle of papers underneath her arm. “What are those?”

Wanda smiles sadly, and lowers herself to the ground. “Sit down, Clint.”

Clint does, albeit a bit awkwardly, and Wanda puts the papers between them. Upon closer inspection, Clint realizes that they’re a collection of unopened letters. He starts to sift through them one-handed, recognizing the writing on the envelope, and tears up before he can stop himself.

“She wrote me?” 

“She knew they would not deliver your letters,” Wanda says quietly. “Not to the Raft. So she wrote them and kept them until you could read them.”

He swallows and continues looking through the letters. There are dozens from Laura, from Lila and Cooper and even Nathaniel (crayon scrawls and all). There are letters from Natasha, too, and he puts those aside, trying to figure out if he can muster up the courage to read them. He can’t help but be angrier at Natasha than usual; Laura, he knew, had her moments and would have absolutely broken down every door and killed anyone in her path to get Clint out of there. But even with the trials they had undergone, she was limited. Natasha had the means and ability to get him out, and she _hadn’t_. Not until now, anyway.

“There is more I can show you,” Wanda says after a long silence. “But I think I should wait a little while and let you look at these.” She starts to get up, and Clint shakes his head, suddenly terrified at the thought of being alone save for a handful of papers from his family.

“Wait,” he says, and Wanda stops moving. “Stay? Please?”

Wanda nods and sits back down, making herself comfortable. She sips her tea while Clint carefully opens letters, and they sit together on the porch until the sun has fully set in the sky above them and everything becomes dark, heaviness and quiet closing in on Clint’s body the same way memories press down on his chest, reminding him of everything he's seemingly lost.

 

 

 **THEN (AKA ONE YEAR AGO) -- New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. 5:00 PM EST.**  

No matter the situation, Natasha Romanoff likes to claim she is nothing but professional, thank you very much. It’s partially why she doesn’t exclaim, “ _what the ever-living fuck are you doing here_?” when Steve pulls up to a deserted field twenty miles from the airport and she sees Nick Fury standing next to an old quinjet.

“I haven’t heard from you since Banner left,” she says, instead of spewing expletives. “Thought you’d died again.”

Fury rolls his eyes. “Good to see you too, Romanoff.”

She hugs him, mostly because she can, mostly because she feels like she needs someone who’s still on her side, and he’s the only one who she feels comfortable enough to grant that belief -- even if at one time, he couldn’t be bothered to trust her. She’s tried to let herself forget about that over the years; being a part of Clint’s family and having Laura’s gentle trust have soothed the hurt she once felt gnawing away at her. But Natasha also knows no matter how good she gets at hiding and forgetting her feelings, they’ll never go away.

“I see you’ve been keeping yourself out of trouble.” 

Natasha shrugs. “I was already mouthing off at the government. I figured the least I could do was make it worse. How’s being mostly dead?”

“Not too bad. You do enough good for people, you get them to call in favors for you.” He nods towards Steve and the jet behind him. “You do realize you need more than a quinjet to break into this place, right?”

“Yes,” Natasha says. “And you seem to be forgetting that you’re talking to the person who successfully dumped millions of HYDRA’s secrets onto the web in about five minutes. _And_ got it trending on Twitter. Hashtag, HydraDump2014.”

“I didn’t forget, Romanoff. But this is a maximum security prison, mostly hidden underwater, and hacking in is going to be tricky.” He pauses, dropping his voice as Steve walks inside the quinjet to check it out. “I went to the farm. No threats right now, so far as I can tell, but we have agents stationed near the farm and on alert in case we need to move the family somewhere. Security measures are in place. Laura’s ready to pick up and leave if it comes to that. Kids are doing alright, they think Barton’s still working. Laura’s worried.”

“I called her,” Natasha adds quietly. “But there’s not much else I can do.”

“You can bring him home,” Fury says wisely. “You know why Barton really joined this fight, don’t you?”

Natasha nods. It had been Steve who had called, but it was Natasha’s call about Wanda being placed under house arrest that had gotten him up from his spaghetti dinner and out the door before the latest episode of _Modern Family_.

_If I don’t bring him home, no one will._

“Yes.” 

“Then do what you need to do, Natasha, and break into that prison.”

Natasha smiles. “You know, you’re not my boss anymore. You can’t order me around.” 

“No, but I can fund transportation,” Fury says, glancing at the quinjet. Steve is walking back towards him, his hands shoved into the pockets of his pants.

Natasha eyes him. “You’re not going to suit up?”

“We’re breaking into a highly secured floating prison, Romanoff. You think my shield will help me look any more inconspicuous?”

Natasha shrugs. “Fair point.” She turns to Fury. “Nick?”

Fury looks taken aback at the use of his first name, but nods. “If you tell me when you’re on approach, I can clear the airspace for you and get you off the radar so that you can fly in undetected,” he confirms. “But we can only hold that distraction for ten minutes, at the most.”

“All we need to do is get in,” Natasha says airily. “I’ve already confirmed that Ross isn’t there. He’s conveniently vacated the prison for a few days because of a very important meeting in Los Angeles for the Accords…one that he’ll eventually find out isn’t happening.” She grins. “Anyway, get into their system, knock out enough of the minions on the detention levels. I need to get eyes on where they’re keeping their weapons -- Barton’s bow, and Sam’s wings. Steve can get through the doors and get the rest of the team out. We can be gone before anyone notices or tries to track us.”

“And once you get out?”

Natasha trades a glance with Steve, who nods slowly.

“We’ve got that covered,” he says cryptically. Fury looks at both of them in turn, and then sighs.

“Remind me again how you got Wilson’s wings out of Fort Meade? I was too laid up to play a part.” 

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “If you think I’m sharing all of my secrets, you’ve got another thing coming.” _Not like you couldn’t trust me with yours,_  she finds herself thinking bitterly, before she pushes the thought from her mind. _Compartmentalize_. That bridge had been crossed and burned in a secret meeting just like this one, and there was no need to rip open old wounds that still weren’t entirely scarred over just because she was feeling vulnerable.

“I figured as much.” Fury nods towards Steve. “You sure you’re up for this?”

“I heal fast,” Steve says, brushing his hands against his pants. “I’d rather keep myself busy than worry about what I can’t change.”

Fury looks at Steve again, and then Natasha. 

“Nick. We’ll be fine. Remember what you told me, once?”

“You need to keep both eyes open?”

Natasha shakes her head. “No matter who wins or loses, trouble still comes around.”

 

 

**NOW -- A farmhouse in Ostenholz, Niedersachsen. Early morning.**

Clint wakes from a deep sleep with a stomach that rolls painfully, reminding him it’s been hours and possibly days since the last time he’s really eaten. Not that he’s particularly hungry, all things considered. But he’s also not an idiot, and he knows he _has_ to eat at some point.

Instead of getting out of bed like he knows he should, he reaches under the mattress where he’s stashed the letters that Natasha had written. He lays them on top of the covers and stares at them for a long time, before sliding his finger carefully underneath each envelope, taking out the pieces of paper to read.

He doesn’t know what he's looking for, if he wants to read an apology from her, or if he just wants to be angry about whatever she's talked about. But to his surprise, the letters are all short and to the point, detailing how much she misses him or telling him a funny joke she had heard while picking up coffee, that had reminded her of his dumb sense of humor. There’s even a whole letter that's just Natasha complaining about the judge who presided over Clint's trial, otherwise known as “a pompous asshole who deserves to die in a house fire with no burial ceremony.”

He gets out of bed, manages to pull on a pair of sweatpants, and doesn’t bother with his shirt -- Wanda’s not Natasha, but she had had a brother, so a bare chest is nothing she's never seen before -- and checks the digital clock on his bedside table. It’s only six in the morning, which means Wanda might not even be awake, which means he’s probably on his own when it comes to scavenging, which is just great.

But Wanda is sitting in the living room when he gets downstairs, her nose buried in a thick book. He clears his throat to announce himself when he sees her.

“There, uh. There wouldn’t happen to be any food around, would there?”

Wanda looks up and smiles, uncrossing her legs from underneath her. “It is about time,” she says, putting the book down. “I was beginning to think you would starve yourself.”

“Not intentionally,” he mutters as he follows her into the kitchen. Wanda takes out a box of cereal and a bag of bread, and goes about starting to prepare breakfast.

“Got any vodka to wash this down with?” Clint asks sarcastically when she puts the bowl of CornFlakes in front of him. Half of him thinks it looks like the most appetizing thing in the world, since all he had been able to eat on the Raft was bland canned food. The other half of him wants to throw it across the room.

“Natasha told me the house is dry,” Wanda replies. “For your own good.”

Clint sighs. “Of course it is.”

“But there is coffee,” she continues with a wink and Clint finds himself smiling; he does have his tells, after all. And Wanda was more in tune with them than he had realized.

“I guess that’ll do. No Bailey’s huh?”

Wanda chooses not to answer and instead finishes buttering the bread that’s just popped out of the toaster.

“So when does Natasha come back?” 

“Sometime today,” Wanda says as she starts the small coffee maker. It reminds Clint of the ones he normally finds in cheap hotels in backwater towns, and he finds himself hoping that the coffee won’t _taste_  the same way the ones in cheap hotels normally do. “She did not tell me a specific time.”

“Right,” Clint says with a small laugh, because he knows better. Natasha would never just give up all her information, especially if she was going somewhere secretly. He takes a bite of toast; it’s fine but also entirely unappealing to his taste buds, and he misses Laura immensely -- her food and the comfort of home, the sound of his children running across the floor and the feeling of them leaping into his arms.

He had read Laura’s letters, which detailed Lila and Cooper’s growth in school and in personality. Two kids in, he could tell easily by the way Nathaniel was scrawling that he was learning how to express himself; not surprising considering Cooper had been making his personality known at six months and Nathaniel was already one. He was probably talking, if not walking, and definitely crawling. He wonders if Lila’s hair has grown at all; he’d joked before he left home that they would wait to cut it together like Rapunzel and donate it to Locks of Love. He swallows down another bout of tears he can’t control, because maybe he missed all that, too.

“Clint?”

“I’m fine,” he says sharply, keeping his eyes away from Wanda’s face. Wanda doesn’t say anything, but she takes his hand and laces their fingers together gently.

“It is okay to be upset,” she says. “I was upset, after the things they did to me.”

Clint takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “They did things to me, too.”

“I know,” Wanda says simply. “Come here. There is something I want to show you.”

Clint's about to complain that he's sick of being fed all these breadcrumbs that probably add up to reclaiming his life, and sick of being treated like he's an addict who can't handle hearing the truth about things. But he bites his tongue and gets up, following her into the living room while shoving the last piece of toast into his mouth. 

“Sit,” Wanda instructs, gesturing to the couch. Clint does, because he doesn’t really feel like asking questions. Wanda places an old Dell computer on his lap -- another thing that looks like it came out of Natasha's 2001 time capsule -- and hits a button, lighting up the screen. 

“What is this?” he asks, letting his eyes focus on a dizzying amount of words. He scrolls with his good hand; the pages of typed paragraphs seem never ending.

“Your trial,” she says simply. Clint’s head snaps up.

“I was there for parts of the trial,” he says slowly. Wanda nods, sitting down next to him.

“I know. I know you knew about the work that we did with Jennifer Walters and Matt Murdock. But you were not there for what went on behind the scenes.” 

Clint furrows his brow as he hunches over, trying to make sense of the words. His eyes catch a paragraph that makes his insides twist together and nausea splashes around in his belly, his stomach threatening to upend the contents of his breakfast. 

“They brought up New York?” Clint asks shakily. “That’s not -- I wasn’t --”

“It was not relevant,” Wanda finishes. “I know. But this is what they did. They used everything they could find against you, in order to keep you in that prison. They even tried to say that you had become a HYDRA agent since you were not around during the fall of SHIELD, but Natasha was able to prove that you were on another mission during that time thanks to some old records. Laura would have said something, but Natasha wanted to keep your family out of the trials as much as possible.”

Clint nods; he had at least known that, as much as he hadn't liked that Laura couldn't defend her husband the way he knows she probably wanted to. Laura and him were a team for a reason, and they had been for years, through botched missions and marriage and childbirth. If Clint was in trouble, Laura deserved the chance to fight for him just as much as Natasha did, secrets be damned. He scrolls further, catching Wanda’s name.

“You gave them something? For the trials?”

Wanda looks embarrassed, if not a little sad. “I submitted a document that talked about how you sacrificed yourself for Pietro in Sokovia,” she says. “And how you helped me fight in the battle at Leipzig. I thought it might help them see that you were not in this fight for yourself.”

Clint continues to read, barely registering Wanda’s words as he lets the full implication of her testimony sink in. “You...you let yourself be regulated by the Accords. Jesus, _Wanda_!”

Wanda bites down on her lip so hard that Clint thinks she’s going to tear right through the skin. “It was part of the deal I made to help your legal battle move faster,” she says quietly, and Clint suddenly feels like he can’t breathe. Spots dance in front of his eyes, and he manages to get air into his lungs in time to stop himself from passing out.

“Wanda...Wanda, for god’s sake, _why_? Why the hell would you do that to yourself?”

“Because,” Wanda says quietly. “I have been selfish for a long time, thinking my actions are the reason people have suffered. Maybe they are, but they are in the same way that you let yourself suffer after the Battle of New York.” She tucks hair behind her ear and meets his eyes . “Besides, I owed a debt.”

 

  

**THEN (AKA ONE YEAR AGO) -- Somewhere Over The Arctic Ocean. Coordinates Classified.**

Natasha navigates the quinjet with ease, trying not to think about the last time she piloted one -- New York, when they didn’t have Clint, who would normally have taken the controls. Natasha counts herself as having decent enough talent when it comes to flying; piloting wasn’t her strongest suit or her highest mark during training, and when it came to being able to truly command a jet, Clint had her skills beat by a mile. But there have been more than enough times that Natasha has co-piloted or flown in battle, and while she can’t do a 360 turn and shake off flying robots the way she knows Clint can, she does consider herself adept enough to not completely botch a mission.

“Shouldn’t take us that long to get into the airspace,” Natasha remarks as they ascend higher, switching some of the controls on. “The Raft isn’t where we want it to be, but Ross actually did us a favor putting it in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. With the quinjet, we should be able to travel pretty quickly. We just have to go in slowly to allow Fury time to prepare the system and so we don’t look suspicious.”

Steve nods next to her; he’s barely paying attention to the sky that stretches out in front of them, the endless clouds that pepper the darkening blue. Natasha glances over with a furrowed brow.

“What the hell are you doing?” 

Steve startles, almost laughably, as if he hasn’t realized he’s not in complete privacy. 

“Writing a letter.” 

“A love letter? To Sharon Carter?”

“Knock it off,” Steve mutters, heaving out a sigh. “A letter to Tony. About what happened in Siberia.”

“Captain America can issue an apology?” When Steve doesn’t answer, Natasha considers maybe not everyone is as skilled at masking their fears with sarcasm as she is, even someone like Steve. She tries not to think about Berlin, and Rhodey, and Clint and Wanda.

“What _did_  happen in Siberia?” Natasha asks more somberly after she’s composed herself enough. Steve looks both sad and conflicted, a measure of vulnerability that Natasha knows he never would have let himself show in her presence as recently as two years ago.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” he says, continuing to write steadily. Natasha stares out the window, shifting the controls, trying not to pay attention to the scrawl she can barely see out of the corner of her eye.

“How do you think he’s doing?”

Natasha doesn’t have to ask for clarification to know that he’s asking about Clint, and she shrugs, trying to keep her reaction as stealth as possible while concentrating on the sky in front of her. 

“I don’t know. He’s angry, probably. It’ll take him awhile to shake it off. Honestly, he’ll be more pissed that they confiscated his gear. It took years before he stopped whining whenever I touched his arrows without his permission. Sam?”

Steve does look up at that. “Angrier that he’s locked up and can’t do anything,” he says after a moment. “He knew what he was in for when he helped me. He knew it could lead to something bad.” He pauses. “What about Barton?”

Natasha looks over sharply. “Are you asking me if Clint knew joining up with you was going to land him in a maximum security prison? Obviously not.” She tries to keep the sharpness out of her voice because it wasn’t Steve’s place to know about her feelings for Clint, or the worry she had for his family. Steve reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder.

“I know he didn’t come for me,” he says. “But I’m glad he was there for her. Tony was wrong. She didn’t deserve to be locked up then, and she doesn’t deserve to be locked up now.”

 _Neither did I, once upon a time_ , Natasha thinks bitterly, trying hard not to shrug off Steve’s touch completely out of spite. _Compartmentalize_. “No one does,” she says when she finds her voice again. Steve seems to understand, going back to his letter while Natasha hones in on the Raft’s location point on their satellite.

“Ten miles out,” she says, shifting her hands on the control and clicking on her comm. She counts the beats and the minutes, waiting patiently until Fury’s voice responds.

“Copy that. Initiating security protocol override in five, four, three…”

Natasha grits her teeth as a beeping confirmation permeates her eardrum and Steve gets up next to her, shoving his letter and pen into a bag.

“Perimeter secure and cleared. Good luck, Romanoff.”

“Need all the help I can get,” she mutters before clicking off her comm, pitching the jet forward and squinting at the tablet propped up next to the flight board. “Cap, if I get close enough, can you swing the landing? I can get the doors open for you. Getting ahead and inside will help us save time after I land this thing.”

“I need the goddamn prison to show itself first,” Steve says as he puts on a thick black jacket. Natasha hits more buttons with one hand, controlling with the other as the jet lowers itself to the water. Almost instantly, a large circular establishment becomes visible, the water around it giving way to a flat surface where two doors open slowly.

“Already there. Clint may be the better pilot, but did I ever tell you multitasking is one of my specialties?”

“Wasn’t in your files,” Steve responds just as sarcastically, looking out the window and then hitting the lock door to unload the quinjet’s landing pad. “I’m going in. Keep me updated.”

“You can’t get in without me, what do you _think_  I’m going to do?” Natasha asks as he leaves with an eye roll. She checks her watch and notes six minutes and four seconds on the timer; she makes a few quick calculations in her head as she pushes a little harder on the controls to speed up the landing. By the time she’s actually dropped the jet to the landing pad, Fury’s speaking again. 

“Nine minutes and sixteen seconds, and we’re back online. No air traffic detected, all systems clear. Well done, Romanoff.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Natasha says, steadying the jet and idling the engine. She grabs her tablet and punches in a code that brings up a surveillance feed. She hits a few more buttons, concentrating hard as her fingers fly over the screen.

“I’m in. I think.” Steve pauses. “Where’s their cell?”

“Hang on, I need to get my bearings,” Natasha responds in an almost bored tone. She can practically hear Steve sweating through his thoughts.

“Getting your bearings means putting me in harm’s way while you take your sweet time?”

“Relax, Rogers, didn’t you learn anything from the mall? Getting my bearings includes overriding their system so that I can kill the feed. They’ll be confused enough that they’ll be caught off guard, and that’s when you’re going to go in.” She sticks her tongue inside her cheek, smiling when she manages to successfully bypass the firewall on the main security system. 

“Got it.”

Steve exhales. “Good. How many guards between the control room and the detention level?”

“Ummm…” Natasha squints at the monitor, hastily counting heat signatures. “I think fifteen.”

“Only fifteen?” 

Too many, right?”

“Really, Romanoff?”

“Just keeping you active.” She uses her fingers to zoom in on one of the surveillance videos she’s managed to get a screen capture of. “Looks like Wanda’s on a separate level, just below the main holding. Barton and the rest of them are on R8, the eighth level, right outside the control room. They’re all in separate cells.”

“Good.” She imagines Steve readying himself. “If I get in, can you open those main doors to the containment unit?”

“Really, Rogers?”

“Just keeping you active.”

Natasha smirks at the empty air. “On my count, then. Three…two...one.” 

She’s barely let the last word drop from her mouth before there’s grunting and smashing echoing in her eardrum, the surest form of confirmation that Steve’s taking care of business in the most Steve way possible. Natasha keeps watch on the monitor, watching heat-riddled bodies jerk and fall as Steve takes them down, one eye fixated on the small clock in the corner. When the last body falls to the floor and there’s quiet in her eardrum, Natasha moves.

“I’m going in.” 

“Nat --”

“Fury can remotely control the quinjet and keep it grounded while we’re gone. I’m going to open the doors and then make sure they stay open. Get them out and bring them back. I’m going to get Wanda and if I’m not back in ten minutes, then you can worry.” She gets up and secures her widow’s bites, double checks the gun she’s stuck in her thigh holster, and then gives one last look at the jet's control panel to make sure it’s going to stay stationary before she grabs her tablet. She lets her fingers fly over the keys until the words **ACCESS: GRANTED**  flash in stark red letters across the screen.

“Doors are open.” Natasha takes a deep breath, trying not to think about how close she is to finally seeing Clint again. _Compartmentalize_. “Let’s break our friends out of this hell hole.”

 

 

**NOW -- A farmhouse in Ostenholz, Niedersachsen. Early evening.**

It takes awhile for Clint to realize he’s been left alone. Morning slips into afternoon, afternoon slips into early evening, and Clint stays on the couch with his eyes glued to the computer screen, taking in everything he can, until his brain feels like it’s going to overload. In addition to Wanda, there are written testimonies from Natasha and even Kate (he doesn’t know how the hell they _found_  Kate; last he had heard she was out in California with America Chavez, and it comforts him that after everything, she obviously cared enough to come to his defense.) Clint remembers being at the trials that had occurred once the legal battle to negotiate his release had gotten underway, but all of his appearances had been via advanced satellite, allowing him to stay in captivity while “attending” and giving his own testimonies that he's sure weren't even considered. He certainly had no idea that people had said or given up so many things for him. 

When he finally stands up and stretches his legs, he becomes aware of the fact that it’s dark outside as well as inside the house. He switches on a lamp next to him, and searches the quiet space for Wanda, wondering if she’s napping or if she’s gone out for her own errands and left him on his own.

It’s neither, he finds out when he opens the door and sees her hovering above the ground. She’s carefully balancing her weight with her hands, forcing red energy towards the ground. Clint stands and watches her in silence, before walking down the steps.

“Meditating?” 

“I think like this sometimes.” Wanda lowers herself slowly back to the ground. “It is calming, in a way.”

“Yeah.” Clint rubs the back of his neck, watching Wanda walk slowly towards him. “I guess you've gotten pretty good at controlling your powers."

"It took time," Wanda says and Clint closes his eyes, guilt and regret washing over him. He was supposed to help her, and be there for her. And instead, he had been locked away, and she had dealt with everything herself. It didn't matter how good she seemed to be now. He knows she once wasn't, and he also knows he can't go back in time and change that.

"I’m sorry," he says, opening his eyes to Wanda's confused face.

“For what?” 

“Everything,” Clint says, gesturing towards the house. “You put yourself out there for me. You and Natasha and Laura...you gave up all these parts of yourself so you could save me. And I did nothing. I dragged you into that prison in the first place, and it was just luck that you got out when I didn’t.”

“That is not true,” Wanda says gently. “You helped me realize that I could face my fears and move forward. If you had not come for me and told me to fight, I would not have been able to understand that, or understand what it feels like to care for someone else.”

“ _And_ you wouldn’t have been caught up in this mess to begin with,” Clint adds miserably. 

“No.” Wanda shakes her head. “You know that is a lie, also. It would not have mattered where I was in the end. The Accords were made for people like me. There was no escaping what was going to happen. I would have been found and imprisoned either way.”

"But you still signed."

Wanda smiles sadly. "Because it was the right thing to do. I did not do it for myself, or even Steve. I did it for you."

Clint's heart beats faster in his chest, because even though he knows nothing about this is technically his fault -- no one told Wanda to give up her rights, it was a choice she had made for herself, and maybe one of the only choices she's been able to have with agency -- he still feels horribly guilty. “I should’ve stayed in that cell. I’m not worth all this, Wanda.” 

“No, you’re not.”

It’s not Wanda who speaks, but another voice, and Clint whirls around to find Natasha standing to his left, shouldering what looks like a heavy backpack.

“Nat?” 

“You’re right.” She doesn’t bother with any kind of greeting, and in a way, it’s comforting, because that’s always been Natasha, whether she’s shown up at the farm or in his room at SHIELD, or at a rescue where he’s holding onto his own life by a thread. “There are people involved in this battle who would have said you’re not worth it. It’s why they didn’t fight for you.” She finds his eyes, and then Wanda’s. “But it’s why we did.”

Clint opens his mouth to respond, but finds that he can’t make himself form words. “I don’t know what to do,” he says finally, the weight of the past twenty-four hours finally crashing down on him. Despite the fact Wanda is here and Natasha is now, too, he feels heavy and isolated -- alone, crushed by his realization of just how long he’s been locked up with barely any real human contact.

“That’s why you’re here,” Natasha says in a soft voice, finally making her way up the steps. "I know you didn't like it. But I know you. And I know how to take care of you." She reaches forward to touch his arm, and Clint flinches out of habit.

“I’m sorry,” he says a little brokenly. “I...I just…”

“You haven’t had someone touch you in awhile,” Natasha says sadly, drawing away. “It’s okay. Wanda, can you put on some coffee, please?” 

Wanda nods, taking her cue to leave, and Clint’s left alone with Natasha silhouetted against the backdrop of the trees and sky. She takes off her backpack and sits down on the steps. 

“Are you still mad?”

“Yes,” Clint says, because he can’t help it and he can't lie. Natasha looks forlorn. 

“I figured you might be. Did Wanda show you the stuff from the trial?” 

Clint nods mutely and sits down next to her. Natasha puts a hand on his knee and Clint flinches, but doesn’t move away.

“You had to know how hard it was for me,” she says heavily. “To know I had to leave you there. To know you were stuck in there, and to not be able to do anything.”

Cint closes his eyes. “Nat, I love you to death, but come on. You could dump all of HYDRA’s secrets onto the Internet in a second. You could find where the world's most super-max prison was located, and you could learn martial arts in five minutes if I taught it to you, but you couldn’t get this goddamn trial to move along any faster?”

“And you think that didn’t _haunt_  me?” Natasha asks sharply. “Do you know how many nights I spent not being able to sleep, because I was worried about you? You weren’t even there during your trials, Clint! You were a fucking _hologram,_  because Ross wouldn’t let you leave! I couldn’t touch you, I couldn’t help you...it took months for us to negotiate for your release, and even then, we got lucky!” 

Clint looks out at the trees as her angry voice cuts through his thoughts. “I read your letters,” he says slowly. “The ones you wrote me, while I was locked up.”

Natasha rests her chin on her knees, drawing her legs closer to her chest. “I got the idea from Steve. He was writing a letter to Tony while we were on our way to rescue you, the first time. I thought it was going to be dumb, but it helped me. It made me feel like I was able to talk to you in some way.”

“But you didn’t apologize.” 

Natasha looks at him with narrowed eyes. “So?”

“ _So_ , you have no idea what it was like being alone in there! They wanted to know about everyone. They wanted to know about you. It was like Loki all over again, but this time, I was aware of what information I was giving them and when I broke down or didn't break down, it was all on me. They didn’t want to let me go because they thought they could use me for intel.” He snorts out a self-deprecating laugh. “Clint Barton, sharpshooter and human who always gets taken advantage of, who puts his friends and the people he loves in danger. Guess that’s supposed to be my legacy now that there's no more SHIELD, right?”

Natasha swallows hard, her eyes sad. “I, uh. I went to visit my parents.” 

Clint raises an eyebrow, the change in conversation and drop of information throwing him out of his anger. “That’s why you left me alone in the middle of nowhere?”

“No,” Natasha says. “I was going to do that anyway. But this isn’t...it’s not the first time I visited them. I didn’t tell you what I did, after SHIELD fell.”

Clint narrows his eyes. “I thought you went to your safe house in Warsaw, to get out of the papers until I came back from Madripoor.” 

“That was part of it,” Natasha admits. “But I also went back to Russia. I found my parents -- well, what was left of them. I guess I should be grateful there were at least gravestones to mark where they had been buried, right?"

Clint stares at her in surprise. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this?” 

“Because it wasn’t your fight,” Natasha says quietly. “I had lost a lot, and...and I just needed to be sure of something that might have been real. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I just...I guess I was confused. But I’m glad I went.” She pauses. “I didn’t expect them to be alive when I found them. I just wanted to know whether that part of me ever really existed or not...whether I was ever more than Natasha Romanoff, or the Black Widow. I wanted to know if there was ever just a Natasha. Or even maybe a Nat. One that’s different than the one that exists to you and your family.” 

Clint stays silent, taking in her words, knowing better than to push her further when she’s said so much already. “So why did you go back now?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha says slowly. “I remembered how I felt when I was lost. And I think I needed something to ground me, since I was still feeling guilty about leaving you in there for so long. At the time, I couldn’t really accept anything that had happened to my parents, or about my past. Now, after all this, I can.” She leans her head on his shoulder and he tries to accept it as a comforting weight rather than a heavy burden. Through it all, it had always been Natasha providing that comfort -- through injuries and betrayals, fights and missions, Lila’s appendicitis and Laura’s prenatal classes and Cooper’s broken wrist. And prison break or not, Clint knows that’s never going to change.

He’s grateful for it.

“Thanks,” he says finally, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Natasha smiles against his shoulder, a ghost of an emotion bleeding into his skin as the door opens behind them, Wanda stepping out onto the porch with two cups of coffee in her hands. 

“You’re welcome.”

 

 

 **THEN (AKA ONE YEAR AGO) -- Somewhere Over The Arctic Ocean. Coordinates Classified.**  

Natasha doesn’t bother to think about how Steve is getting anyone out. She’s too focused on Wanda, on finding Wanda and getting Wanda out of her shock collar, and then making sure the poor girl doesn’t throw up or pass out while she’s leading her back to the quinjet. The alarms start to blare above her as she gets in sight of the quinjet, indicating that their cover has more or less been blown in the time it’s taken them to complete their mission, and Natasha breathes a sigh of relief when she limps up the landing pad with Wanda’s arm wrapped around her shoulder. 

She doesn’t let herself think about anything else as the jet lifts and starts to fly, still remotely controlled by Fury for the moment. They had cut it close with Wanda, who had been locked in her own cell with her own set of passcodes that thankfully, Natasha had enough pilfered tech to get through quickly. She helps Wanda to one of the passenger seats and buckles her in for good measure, scanning the belly of the quinjet. Sam is sitting by himself on the floor, clad in what she assumes is his prison uniform, and the guy Natasha only knows as Ant-Man is nervously cracking his knuckles in the corner, looking to all the world like a lost puppy.

They're the only other people she sees.

“Where the _fuck_  is Clint?”

“We…” Steve looks pained. “We couldn’t get there in time before the alarms started.”

Natasha stops in her tracks as the quinjet rumbles beneath her, her stomach dropping out from under her as the jet falters, seemingly in tune with her emotions. “So you...you just _left_  him there?”

“We had a timeline, Natasha! You said so yourself!”

“I don’t care what I said!” Natasha snaps, her voice rising. “Did your fucking timeline include every man for himself?”

Sam gets up immediately and steps between them while Wanda unbuckles herself and curls into a small ball. Natasha feels like she should be more concerned about that, but right now, the only thing she’s concerned about is the one body who isn’t on board. Maybe, if they ever got back to the farm, Laura could do that mothering thing she was so good at and Wanda could get the help she obviously needed.

The help Clint would have undoubtedly given her, despite the fact he had grumbled to Natasha time after time again that he was _not_  her father.

“Nat, he’s got a point.”

“Don’t you dare,” Natasha says sharply. “Sam, you don’t know anything about this situation.”

“I know what it feels like to leave a man behind,” Sam retorts firmly. “And so does he.”

Natasha’s entire body vibrates with anger as she eyes Steve, who looks crestfallen and guilty. “This wasn’t your call to make.”

“Whose call was it, then?” Steve asks, and Natasha can see his patience fraying. “The firing squad that was going to take us into custody when they realized we were breaking out their prisoners? Look, I don’t like the fact that we left him in there, either, but we had to make choices. We know people now, and maybe we can negotiate some kind of legal release.”

Natasha stares at him, dumbfounded. “You think the people who locked him up will have any interest in propositioning a wanted criminal for _legal release_?” she asks, anger bubbling over. "You think Ross would allow that?"

Sam blocks her again as she rushes towards him with her fists raised. “Natasha. Don’t.”

Natasha steps back and tries to concentrate on the gentle hum of the quinjet being set on course towards what Natasha assumes is some sort of safe haven. She marches to the pilot seat, suddenly intent on needing something to do, and, well. Piloting was better than nothing. It was Clint’s method of de-stressing, anyway. The corners of her mouth lift in a sad smile when she thinks about all the times she’d teased him for wanting to fly when they could have just as easily taken a car or bus to the farm. ( _“He wanted the relaxation,”_ she would tell Laura with an eye-roll when she came outside to ask why they were coming via unconventional travel, _again_.)

“What do we do?” Steve asks quietly, and in her haze of anger, it takes Natasha a moment to realize he’s standing behind her. “Do we go back?”

“No,” Natasha says shortly, knowing that it’s a lost cause. There’s no way they could go back there now, what with the alarms tipped and the prison break already in motion. If Fury had called this a suicide mission to begin with, to turn around and go back in would be setting themselves up for certain death. “We go forward.”

“What --” 

“I’m going back to the farm.”

“Is that a good idea?” Steve asks dubiously and Natasha’s hands tighten on the controls as she steers the jet higher into the clouds.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a good idea. We’ve already messed up once, and I’m not messing up again.” She blinks back tears, grateful that Steve probably can’t see them from his vantage point. “We’re getting Clint home, and this time, I’m not letting anyone else do it for me.”

 

 

**NOW -- A farmhouse in Ostenholz, Niedersachsen. Early evening.**

By the time Clint has showered (as well as he feels he can shower with a fractured arm, at which point he congratulates himself on having the good fortune to be ambidextrous) and by the time he’s found a new set of clothes that don’t make him feel like he’s a complete hobo, Natasha is unloading bags of groceries in the kitchen, with Wanda’s help. 

“I didn’t know there was any sort of store here,” he says as he eyes the bags, and Natasha smiles.

“You didn’t pay too much attention to your surroundings, Hawkeye. And there isn’t. The only real store here is a bar at the gas station.”

“Great. So where did all the food come from?”

“Special delivery,” she says casually, and Clint rubs his forehead with his good hand, trying to ward off a headache he feels coming on. It’s pointless to ask Natasha to elaborate, and quite frankly, he’s at the end of his rope on so many levels that he doesn’t even care how much it annoys him that she’s acting like they’re back to their first year of a partnership. It's the quintessential way Natasha treated him after being compromised, a safety net she could afford herself while making sure he was really okay, and he was really back to being the Clint Barton she knew and loved.  

“At least tell me if there’s booze in one of those bags.”

“Like I told Wanda, this is a dry house,” Natasha says without sounding apologetic. “Sorry. You’re going to have to wait until you get back to the farm if you want to drink yourself into a pathetic sad puddle, because I’m not letting you succumb to your vices on my watch.”

“I do not drink myself into a pathetic sad puddle,” Clint mutters defensively, sitting down at the table. He notices Natasha doesn’t respond, but also hides a smile that no one else would probably notice. Wanda sits down next to him and hands him a burner phone. 

“The prisoner gets a personal call?” he asks as Natasha joins him.

“One personal call. If you want.” She slides a crumpled post-it note across the table, a yellow paper that looks like it’s seen better days, and Clint’s stomach rolls as he stares down at his own phone number.

“She missed you,” Natasha says when he doesn’t pick up the piece of paper. “She wants you to come home.”

“So why am I here?” Clint murmurs, speaking more to the table than the two people sitting at it. Natasha exchanges a glance with Wanda. 

“Because you were hurt. And upset. And while I worked on how we could get you home safely, I needed a place for you to lie low.” Natasha pauses. “And I needed to know that after all of this, you were okay. That we were okay.”

“It is okay if you are not,” Wanda adds. “We would understand.” 

Clint flexes the fingers of one hand, and looks at Natasha. “I’m not okay,” he says slowly, and it feels like it's a relief to say it out loud when he refused to say it for so long after New York, when that's all Natasha wanted him to do. “But I want my family. And I want to go home.” He casts his gaze downward. “I just...it's been so long. What if I’ve missed everything?” 

“Read the letters,” Natasha says, nudging his ankle gently with her foot. “You didn’t miss everything. You were still there at every point in their lives, even if you weren’t physically home. Laura made sure of it. So did I.”

Clint swallows hard, not meeting either of their eyes. “I need time.”

“I know you do,” Natasha says. “And we’ll be there for you, if you need time. You can stay here for as long as you need to, and I’ll stay here with you. Wanda will, too.”

“I can’t let you do that,” Clint says, shaking his head. “You already sacrificed way too much just to get me out of there. You gave things up that I'd never ask you to. I can’t…” He thinks of Natasha’s letters, of Wanda’s testimony. “You have lives outside of me.”

“Actually, I do not,” Wanda says. “I am supposed to stay under the radar thanks to the fact I signed those Accords, and Natasha has said that she will protect me. Laura has told me she will do everything she can to protect me, too, if there are consequences.” She smiles tentatively. “This is a home, for now. With you. Maybe you can teach me some things. We have a lot to catch up on.”

“And if you think I have a life outside of you, I don't know where you've been living for the past ten years," Natasha says pointedly. "Your kids are practically my kids. I know your underwear size. Besides, someone needs to keep a watch on that arm. I mean, I’ve seen how you are with injuries when you have to take care of yourself. You don’t exactly have the best track record.” 

Clint manages a laugh, looking at the two people in front of him. “You’re not gonna gang up on me, are you? I mean, I already know what it’s like what I’m home and Natasha spends time at the farm. I never get to win.”

“You’re way too paranoid about being picked on,” Natasha says dryly. Clint picks up the piece of paper with shaking hands.

“Call her,” Wanda says quietly, looking at him encouragingly. “She loves you. You are supposed to talk to people that love you.”

Clint nods and takes a breath, and then dials with one hand, bringing the phone to his ear. He waits, his heart pounding against his ribcage, until it stops ringing and clicks.

“Hey, Laura. It’s me.” He pauses, allowing the words he hasn’t been able to say for a year to sink in. “Yeah, Natasha’s here with me.” He can’t help the smile creeping across his face as he says the words, and steadies his voice before he speaks again.

“I’m out, for real. And I’m free.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com).


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